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NEW YORK -- A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled Sunday when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team said it learned that a Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.

Yankees President Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.

"The first thought was, you know, it's never a good thing to be buried in cement when you're in New York," Levine said. "But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?"

On Saturday, construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt's location.

"We had anonymous people come tell us where it was, and we were able to find it," said Frank Gramarossa, a project executive with Turner Construction, the general contractor on the site.

It took about five hours of drilling Saturday to locate the shirt under 2 feet of concrete, he said.

A worker at the new Yankee Stadium pulls a David Ortiz jersey out of the concrete. A Red Sox fan had placed the jersey in the concrete beneath the stadium in the hopes of jinxing the Yankees.

On Sunday, Levine and Yankees CEO Lonn Trost watched as Gramarossa and foreman Rich Corrado finished the job and pulled the shirt from the rubble.

In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters "Red Sox" on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Trost said the Yankees had discussed possible criminal charges against Castignoli with the district attorney's office.

"We will take appropriate action since fortunately we do know the name of the individual," he said.

A woman who answered the phone at Castignoli's home in the Bronx on Sunday said he was not there.

A spokesman for Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said Sunday he did not know whether any criminal charges might apply.

Levine said the shirt would be cleaned up and sent to the Jimmy Fund, a charity affiliated with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

"Hopefully the Jimmy Fund will auction it off and we'll take the act that was a very, very bad act and turn it into something beautiful," he said.

Wow, the Red Sox have really got a grip over the Yankees organization now. If this would have happened pre-2004, they would have just laughed it off. Now they're spending 5 hours with a jackhammer digging up a harmless piece of cotton. My how the tables have turned.

Grape works as a soda. Sort of as a gum. I wonder why it doesn't work as a pie. Grape pie? There's no grape pie. - Larry David

Wow, the Red Sox have really got a grip over the Yankees organization now. If this would have happened pre-2004, they would have just laughed it off. Now they're spending 5 hours with a jackhammer digging up a harmless piece of cotton. My how the tables have turned.

I hope the Yankees try to prosecute the construction worker and open the floodgates to tons of bad PR.

Although the construction worker should have waited until Opening Day 2009 to let anyone know about the jersey. Sometimes we get the best of us wanting to tell someone about "hey, guess what I did...".

Wow, the Red Sox have really got a grip over the Yankees organization now. If this would have happened pre-2004, they would have just laughed it off. Now they're spending 5 hours with a jackhammer digging up a harmless piece of cotton. My how the tables have turned.

I hope the Yankees try to prosecute the construction worker and open the floodgates to tons of bad PR.

Although the construction worker should have waited until Opening Day 2009 to let anyone know about the jersey. Sometimes we get the best of us wanting to tell someone about "hey, guess what I did...".

An even better scheme would be to tell them you buried one beneath the biggest section of concrete in the park...... especially if you didn't.

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
~ Mark Twain

Although the construction worker should have waited until Opening Day 2009 to let anyone know about the jersey. Sometimes we get the best of us wanting to tell someone about "hey, guess what I did...".

Or, more likely, the guy who buried the jersey wasn't the only one at the site when the concrete was being poured.

(If the Yankees really gave a rip about karma, they wouldn't be leaving the house that Ruth built in the 1st place.)

I'll also point out that David Ortiz, he of the buried jersey, is currently 6-43 (.070) in 2008. Perhaps he, more than anyone else, wanted his jersey out of Bronx concrete.

I'll also point out that David Ortiz, he of the buried jersey, is currently 6-43 (.070) in 2008. Perhaps he, more than anyone else, wanted his jersey out of Bronx concrete.

or maybe his HGH quit working?

"My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it's never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger." -Josh Hamilton

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